[ { "id": 208504, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 228, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "212\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nand Mr. Stephen J. Karsen at an altitude of about 700 metres on Lantau Peak on 19 October 1979 that it became possible to confirm the identification of this species on the basis of both stages of its life cycle. Subsequently, two more of these frogs were found by Father Anthony Bogadek: one at around 690 metres altitude on Tai Mo Shan on 26 October and the other between Lantau Peak and Ngong Ping (altitude not recorded) on 9 November 1979.\n\nLeptobrachium pelodyroides has been recorded—as Megophrys pelodytoides from Fukien (= Fujian) in China by Pope (1931, p.447). It has also been listed (under the name Carpophrys pelodytoides) for China from Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangxi (Anon., 1977). These frogs as represented in Hong Kong are closely related to certain other geographical populations of frogs, for example in Thailand and Malaysia, and evidently there is need of a comprehensive study. Until one herpetologist can bring together specimens, which should include tadpoles, from all related populations for comparison, the geographical limits of Leptobrachium pelodytoides will remain undefined.\n\nOne of the adult frogs and two of the tadpoles recorded here from Hong Kong have been presented to the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. The others, except for one of the frogs, are in my own private collection.\n\nMy thanks are due to Dr. Robert F. Inger (Field Museum of Natural History) for most helpful observations, and to all those mentioned above for kindly presenting me with specimens.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAnonymous (Compiled by the Amphibians and Reptiles Research Department of The Biological Research Institute of Sichuan Province)\n\n1977 Systematic Keys to China's Amphibians. (In Chinese) Science Press, Beijing.\n\nPope, C. H.\n\n1931 Notes on Amphibians from Fukien, Hainan, and Other Parts of China. Bull. Am. Mus. nat. Hist., Vol. 61, pp. 397-611.\n\nHong Kong, 8 February 1980\n\nJ. D. ROMER", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213776, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "99\n\nLang, Heng Shan Shi Lang, Zhao Hou San Lang, Zhang Zhao Er Lang, and \"countless others\"\n\n17\n\nOnly the Lü Shan Jiu Lang, Zhao Hou San Lang and Zhang Zhao Er Lang are found in the Cantonese and Hakka ritual specialists' manuals, and Yao ritual manual from Qujiang County, Guangdong and Guangxi Province. But their predecessors, however unlikely, were not invented by Bai Yuchan or his disciples. We do see mention of the King of Asura, Tou To Wang, and Changsha Wang in a Yao manual from Liannan. The King of Asura as a major god is not one would expect in a Chinese context as the Buddhist (as well as the Hindu) consider Asura \"powerful demons\", although the same gods represents good in Persian mythology. Interestingly, there were some gods whose native place was what could be sinicization of Persia in the Liannan document.\n\nThe gods Zhao Hou San (3) Lang and Zhang Zhao Er (2) Lang appeared in the Yao ritual manuals from Qujiang county and in a slightly altered form in excerpts from Guangxi Province. They were featured together with Lu Shan Jiu Lang in the local Cantonese priestly tradition. The latter has a manual entitled Daojiao Yuanliu (“The Origin of Daoism”) (NJYL) which is a handbook on both the style of rituals with the Lü Shan Jiu Lang and the Wang Tai Mu in a central position, and another style more closely related to the Canonical tradition. In the Taiwan and Fujian case, the connection with Lu Shan Jiu Lang was mentioned in the hagiography of Chen Jinggu, a goddess central to one school of the Taiwanese ritual experts as well as the local Cantonese and Hakka ritual specialists. Although there are many versions of her story, they agree that she lived during the Five Dynasties period, in Fujian. According to the Ming work San Jiao Yuanliu Shou Shen Da Chuan, believed to be the work of popular authors of Fujian, She was a disciple of Lu Shan Jiu Lang. The book illustrates the entry with a man in Daoist garment holding a cow's horn, the latter being one of the objects common to the local Hakka and Cantonese and the Taiwanese \"popular\" magicians. More recent versions of Chen's story named the famous Xu Xun who was accepted as the patriarch of a respectable school of Daoism, identifying Xu with Lu Shan Fa Zu, the patriarch of Lu Shan. Although this may seem a change in the genealogy reflecting change of alliance between different schools of magic, some Yao material suggests that the two\n\n14", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "120\n\n24\n\nН\n\nTou To Wang, Changsha Wang and various Muowang \"demons\" I have not consulted Shuton Yoshio eds. Yao Documents (Tokyo Kodansha 1975)\n\nFor example the Buddhist concept of Liu Dao, and the Asura was summoned by the Devil King to fight the Buddha in the Dunhuang narrative literature Buo Muo Branwen, in Dunhuang Brannen, in Tarper Shipe Shuju reprint, 1980, p 347 But in a passage of the Hua Yan Jin quoted by Hong MA,, op cut P. 1680, the King of Asura was among those summoned by the Bodhisattva to come to the rescue of those in turmoil\n\nBut Muowang \"Demon Kings' also featured in canonical Daoism in which They have been conquered by the Daoist gods and can be summoned by Daoist for protection\n\nEven then the Jade Emperor's native place, according to the same document, was \"Puo Xi\" which could have been Persia too\n\nSee Jiang op eit for Qujiang, and Hu Qiwang et al Bancun Yang, Minzu Chubanshe, 1983, for Guangxi Province\n\n\"See Lagerwey for the present situation\n\n\"The SJYLSSDC as we see now, a Qing reprint of the Ming book, has a passage that says Chen went to Lu Shan to study magic. But the next four characters do not make sense The crucial characters will give the master's name as Jiu Lang and can be found in reprints in a more recent series A Ming version reprint of the same book, under the title of Sanpao Yuanliu Shengdi Faozu Shoushen Dachuan, in the series Zhongguo Mijian Xinvang Zijido Hunbuan, Taiwan, 1989, gets most of the characters right. Compare also Shi Shen, a Qing manuscript also reprinted in the same series that quotes a Zheng Shou Shen ji, the passage is otherwise identical with SJYLSSDC\n\n\"See for example Lagerwey, perhaps Liu Zhiwan also. Note the latter being account of practice of the Zhang Fazu sect, which seemed not to involve the Lu Shan Jiu Lang at all\n\nTh\n\nInteresting information is found in John Lagerwey was not mentioned, instead \"John Keupers\", \"A Description of the Fa-ch'ang Ritual as Practiced by the Lu Shan Taoists of Northern Taiwan\", in Saso and Chappell eds Buddhist and Taoist Studies 1. Hawaii University of Hawaii, 1977, p 83 This article on the Lu Shan San Nai sect shows, without saying so, that the confusion has multiplied as the priest has mistaken the pair Lu Shan Jiu Lang and Wang Tu Mu for Dong Wang Gong and Xi Wang Mu, two prominent gods in canonical Daoism, and by two steps of substitution (Xu Xun = Lu Shan Jiu Lang, Dong Wang Gong = Lu Shan Jiu Lang) identified Dong Wang Gong with Xu Xun\n\n-\n\nSee for example the San Jiao Shou Shen Da Chuan\n\nMin Du Wai Ji by den He Qiu, reprinted 1987 by Fujian Renmin Chubanshe\n\nYuan Hao-wen, Yi Jian Zhi, Reprint Beijing Zhonghua Shuju, 1988\n\n14\n\nALL\n\nOp eit pp 1181, 1429\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213884, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "210\n\nKong and the British Consul to act as arbitrators.”\n\nThe Governor could not conceal his excitement. To persuade London to accept this proposal, the Governor quoted from earlier information that he received from someone he believed to be very close to President Yuan:\n\n[The President said] as the state of things in Canton was so desperate, the only course open was for the Canton Government to ask for foreign intervention and to get the Canton province run as the customs are run: for a limited period of 20 to 30 years.\n\nTo help this proposal to get through in London and Beijing, the Governor of Hong Kong telegraphed his British colleagues in the treaty ports for assistance. Sir Jordan recorded that his part in this scheme was \"to induce President [Yuan] to accept this principle and instruct Canton accordingly\". This scheme, however, failed to materialize because the influence of Liang Shiyi in Beijing declined suddenly in face of his political competition with the Anhui military men, another group of supporters of Yuan. To save its decline, the Communication Clique was driven to support Yuan's monarchical movement, a move which proved to be a political disaster for the Communication Clique. The majority of them had a narrow escape to Japan or Hong Kong after the fall of Yuan.\n\nThe worse for the Cantonese was yet to come. After the death of Yuan, Sun Yat-sen, together with Wu Tingfang returned to Canton from Shanghai and declared a new constitutional government in the South. Without an army under his control, he brought with him a guest army from Guangxi. I quote from a memoir of a Guangxi general that:\n\nThey really look awful! This same uniform had been worn through a war and a hot summer & in most cases had been worn to rags. Without needle or thread, many soldiers simply used grass to fasten the torn [pieces] together; the entire army was in a state of near-starvation...\n\nHe explained the difficulty of his army and how the army was formed:\n\nWhen the anti-Yuan movement had started, local armies were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213886, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "212\n\nthe return of Chen Jiongming from the neighbouring province of Fujian. Chen was the Governor-General of Guangdong in 1912 and 1913. After the failed \"Second Revolution\" in 1913 against Yuan, he escaped to Malaysia (while Sun to Japan) and developed his own anti-Yuan organization independent of Sun's party in Japan. When the Canton Government was established in 1917, nominally under Sun Yat-sen, he returned to Canton only to find that the guest armies had real control over the province. As a result, he gathered a small troop of soldiers made up of native Cantonese and moved to Fujian in early 1918, where he strengthened its fighting potential. Chen Jiongming's return was financially supported by a group of Chinese bankers, who were affiliated with Liu Zhubo, in Hong Kong. They advanced to Chen Jiongming an amount of $200,000 and promised to pay the Guangxi troops a “give-way fee”, if the armies retreated to their home provinces. The fighting could not wait for bargains, as in late October Chen Jiongming's army had forced its way into Canton. The Guangxi guest armies obtained the \"overdue army expenditure\" through a different means. The guest armies retreated westward to Guangxi, looting all the way home.\n\nThe return of the Cantonese troops under Chen Jiongming was welcomed by the Cantonese. The atmosphere in Canton, as reviewed in the newspapers, was that Chen Jiongming should be the Provincial Governor. Funds for a new government were promised by the merchants.\n\nAt this juncture, on November 25, Sun Yat-sen and his key supporters left Shanghai and triumphantly returned to Canton. He prepared to assume power again. After all, Chen was Sun's subordinate in 1913 and 1917. The situation Sun found on his return to Canton was not to his liking. Sun was made Director and Minister of the Interior in the restored government. Wu Tingfang was made Minister of Foreign Affairs. But Chen Jiongming had been planning for the future in Canton, and his list of titles was impressive. Chen was the Minister of War, Governor of Guangdong, Commander in Chief of the Guangdong Army, and High Inspecting Commissioner of Guangdong and Guangxi. In January of 1921, Sun summoned all available parliamentarians to a meeting in Canton. There was no quorum, but they voted anyway. At the end, the Parliament elected Dr. Sun Provisional President of China. Chen Jiongming was in no hurry to act, nor was he ready to listen to Sun. In an interview with the British Consul, Sun described his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213986, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "21\n\nIt was, in fact, used as one of the main features of the Hong Kong stand at the Exposition at Vancouver, in 1986 (see Plate 1). Bamboo scaffolding was also erected in Edinburgh, Scotland, by two master craftsmen, including Choi Keung of the Construction Industry Training Authority, in 1996, as part of the 'Hong Kong Tomorrow' exhibition (see Plate 2). Although bamboo is used in some other Asian countries as well, nevertheless it does typify Hong Kong.\n\nBamboo, which has a long history for use as scaffolding in southern China, is imported into Hong Kong from the neighbouring province of Guangdong. But most of the bamboo comes from the adjacent, humid province of Guangxi, where it is cultivated. It takes about one year to grow to a useable size but in a very dry year with little rain it will take two years.\n\nMuch is floated down the Pearl River with lengths lashed together to form rafts. From Guangzhou the bamboo goes to Macau from where it is shipped to Hong Kong. There are different kinds. Yellow bamboo is considered better than the grey variety. Lengths, on average, vary from 23 to 33 feet (the trade still tends to work in imperial measure rather than metric) and it is from 2 to as large as 10 inches in diameter. For extra compressive strength, on tall buildings, China fir poles are sometimes used as standards (uprights) every 20 feet or so as well as for main cross-bracing members. These take three to four years to grow to a useable size.\n\nTraining\n\nThe skill of erecting scaffolding has, by tradition, normally been passed on from master craftsman to apprentice. 'Tricks of the trade' are seldom made known to people outside the trade or written down.12 The traditional period for an apprenticeship was three years, although this has since, generally, been reduced to two years because of a shortage of scaffolders. In the old days being an apprentice, Chinese style, meant one was almost a slave to one's master. Even as late as the 1950s, this included being the master's cook, servant, laundryman and general dogsbody. The pay at the time was HK$10.00 a month for the first year, HK$20.00 for the second, and HK$30.00 a month for the final year. In addition to making obeisances and burning joss sticks to the three patron deities, in those days life was hard and for the first year or so the job of a new apprentice was largely fetch and carry. Only later was he allowed to climb and taught how to tie a knot. If he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215318, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "THE POPULAR RELIGION GODS\n\nTHE HAINANESE\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n43\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis article is a study of the popular religion gods to be found on the altars of Chinese folk religion temples on the island of Hainan as well as in 'Hainanese temples' within the confines of former colonial territories in south-east Asia. I will be endeavouring to isolate the purely Han Chinese Hainanese deities from those of their surrounding neighbours, the non-Han minority peoples on Hainan itself as well as from emigrant Han Chinese communities in south-east Asia. The latter includes emigrants who speak the Han linguistic groups of Hakka, Hokkien (and its sub-groups including Minnan and Hengwa (Xinghua)), Cantonese (and two of its sub-groups) and Guangxi, as well as the smaller groups such as Chaozhou [Swatowese].\n\nThe tropical island of Hainan, literally \"South of the Ocean,\" lies off the south coast of China and was formerly part of Guangdong province. In 1988 it became a province in its own right. 150 miles in length and 100 in breadth, it is one sixth the size of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, half the size of Ceylon and four times the size of Cyprus, with its main port of Haikou and the provincial capital, Qiongzhou, both on its northern coast.\n\nSeparating the island of Hainan from the mainland is the Qiongzhou Straits, with the 170-mile-long Leizhou peninsula in Guangdong province leading into the mainland proper. The proximity of the Leizhou peninsula has led to a small number of the deities with a Guangxi base being incorporated into Hainanese legend and carried by emigrants to all parts of south-east Asia, often without the connection being realised. Devotees in distant parts have assumed that these deities were unique to Hainan, even to accepting place names within the legends as Hainanese when they were quite clearly from the Leizhou-Guangxi border region.\n\nHistorically, Hainan island was one of the later regions to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215333, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "58\n\nclaiming that the Society used to worship ‘openly' in Hainanese temples before convening a meeting. One hundred and eight is also a Buddhist number, the number of the beads in a rosary, the number of passions and delusions, and the number of tolls of the monastery bell at dawn and dusk. A further connotation of the number 108 is reflected in the number of times temple keepers claimed that the Brothers were the 108 heroes at Liang Shan Po in the classic novel, Shuihu Chuan, 'The Water Margin,' but when pressed, in every case they admitted that this had been no more than a guess.\n\nThe Brothers are also known as:\n\nYibai You Ba Gong 一百有八公\n\nYibai You Xiongdi 一百有八兄弟 and\n\nYibai Lingba Xiongdi Zhonghun 一百零八兄弟忠魂\n\nLu Bode and Ma Yuan are two generals revered in Hainanese temples, often on the same altar, with both bearing the same honorific, the Wave Conquering General, [Fupo Jiangjun13].\n\nThe first general, Lu Bode, subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province during the Earlier Han [ca. 120 BC]. A native of Pingzhou, he served with distinction under He Chubing who became the president of the Board of War. In BC 120 he subjugated large portions of what is today Guangdong and Guangxi, and received further honours.\n\nThe second general, Ma Yuan [14BC - AD 49], was also awarded the title of the Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region some hundred years later. Popular in Guangdong province he used also to be particularly honoured in Guangxi where he was revered as a river god, \"The Wave Conquering General - Fupo Jiangjun' and in Hengzhou in Hunan he used to be the main deity in a small temple where he was worshipped as the protective deity at the local river rapids.\n\nMa Yuan, also known as the Vanguard General, Xianfeng14 led a further southern expansion of the Han empire and has been popularly worshipped from about the fifth century AD by Han settlers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215598, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 375, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "بلد\n\n325\n\nthey listened to his plans to modernise China and how he could raise the capital to assist them succeed in doing so, they always went their own ways, often adapting his plans but - as he stressed - without his guiding hand they were never the success they could have been had he been permitted to supervise them.\n\nIn 1905 he described how back in 1879 he had travelled to Sichuan from Guiyang where he had been trying to persuade the Guizhou Provincial Governor, Chen Yuying, to develop the resources of the province by means of a railway from Guiyang to Yongxian in Guangxi province, connecting that city with Canton by a line of steamers on the Yun and West Rivers. He then spent over six months in Chongqing, again offering to supply funds and plans for building suitable steamers to navigate the upper waters of the Yangzi, through the Gorges as far as Chongqing and beyond to Yibin. He added that he was able to speak with authority on the navigation of the upper Yangzi by steamers, \"but no one would listen to me, and even intelligent foreigners, when consulted on the subject, declared I was a visionary and an imaginator of many impractical plans. Some ten days later in a subsequent issue of his Miscellany he wrote 'Whilst here in Shanghai in November 1875, I offered to superintend the construction of a suitable steam-boat for navigation on the upper Yangzi, as far up as Yibin and Chengdu, but the wise Britishers of those days declared that was an impossibility, because British naval officers had studied the subject and declared it to be impossible. I proved to be a good quarter of a century ahead of the progressive age.' Steam-boats now navigate the Upper Yangzi for all that, though they are not as useful as they might have been, had they been devised and constructed under the guidance of a mastermind!\n\n3\n\nPaul King : In the Chinese Customs Service: Heath and Cranton Ltd : London : 1924.\n\nArchibald John Little : Through the Yang-tse Gorges or Trade and Travel in Western China: Sampson Low, Marston & Co.: London : 1898 [Third and Revised Edition].\n\nFacing p. 288 of Little's book, Through the Yang-tse Gorges or Trade and Travel in Western China.\n\nWilliam Mesny: Mesny's Chinese Miscellany : Shanghai : 1st January\n\nPage 375\n\nPage 376", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216036, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 335, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "269\n\nthe time ripe for an insurrection..\n\nThe rebellion began among the Hakka people in the southern provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong and by 1853 was spreading north and west, led by Hong Xiuquan, a schoolmaster who had picked up a smattering of Christianity. Whilst suffering from an illness he experienced severe hallucinations and saw that his mission was to free the Chinese from Manchu rule. He also convinced himself and others that he was the younger brother of Christ and a son of God sent to save mankind. The Taiping rebels were known colloquially by the Chinese peasants as the Long-haired Rebels, Chang Mao, as they refused to shave the front of their head. [China's Manchu conquerors had ordered that all Chinese males would shave the front half of their head and wear the rest tied into a lengthy queue or 'pigtail'.] Hong Xiuquan's liberated territory was known as the Kingdom of Great Peace, Taiping Tianguo and by 1860 he had more than a quarter of China under his control. Much of the fighting between the Manchu Imperial forces and the Taiping rebel armies took place across Zhejiang province and down the Yangzi, especially around the Taiping capital at Nanjing. With Zhenjiang captured by the Taiping in April 1853 [a mere eleven years after the British had taken the city], their control of the southern bank of the Yangzi was virtually complete. Zhenjiang lay deserted during the Taiping era, being no more than a fort occupied by the Taiping rebels. The pagodas and temples were all destroyed with the usual Taiping iconoclastic fervour, and in many places their stones used as fortifications. The city, surrounded on three sides by a remarkable line of Taiping trenches some ten to eleven miles in length, was besieged several times by the Imperial forces. Each time they were driven off, with the city remaining in Taiping hands until compelled by a failure of supplies the rebels were forced to evacuate it early in 1857. Zhenjiang never fully recovered. The Taiping were finally defeated in 1864 when their capital at Nanjing finally fell to the Imperial forces - assisted by several foreign-led armies of Chinese and western mercenaries, one of which was the Ever-Victorious Army under General Gordon. Rasmussen in 1905 refers to the decayed trench system as 'Gordon's trenches', with some of his guns still to be found sunk deep into the soil of their old embrasures. He added that 'the only reminder now [1905] of the Taiping Rebellion was the thousands of graves covering the countryside, and the ghost-ridden walled city where the whole population had been put to the sword'. Thomas Adkins, the British Consul in Zhenjiang,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216324, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "32\n\ncould see, and it seemed as if it were one vast garden'.\"\n\nParkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas (1937) writes: \"When the whole [EIC] China fleet was collected there, twelve or sixteen of the largest merchantmen in the world, together with the country ships, the spectacle must have been magnificent.\" He records that sometimes the Viceroy at Canton would come down to visit the fleet. The ships would be decked to receive the great man, with yards manned and officers in full dress.12\n\nCanton\n\nCanton was, and is, the capital of the Guangdong Province. One of the larger and richer cities of the Chinese Empire, and dating back to pre-Han times, it had long been a major sea port for overseas trade, notably in the Tang Dynasty when it had a significant Arab and Muslim population. During the turmoil which accompanied the change of dynasty from Ming to Qing, it upheld the Ming, endured an eleven-month siege in 1650, and suffered a wholesale massacre of its inhabitants. However, it recovered, and by the mid-nineteenth century was credited with a population of around one million persons. It was renowned for its manufactories, carried on by human industry, without the aid of machinery, particularly in silk and cloth, women and children included, whilst trade - international and regional trade - was described as being 'the great business of life'.13\n\nCanton was a walled city (actually two walled cities in one, the Old and the New) with major suburbs along the Pearl River, and to the West.14 As befitted its status, it contained the yamens (office-residences) of many senior government officials, including those of the governor-general of the two linked provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, the governor of Guangdong, the Canton prefect, two county magistrates, the Tartar general, the provincial naval commander, and the like, as well as those officials with charge of other, specialised concerns, and (of special status, since he was responsible directly to Beijing) the Hoppo or Superintendent of Maritime Customs, who oversaw the foreign trade and its accruing revenue.\n\nThe Foreign Factories (British, French, Swedish, Spanish, Danish and Dutch) of the river suburb were so-called from their being the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]